


Bitter Heat

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Dom/sub, M/M, Religion Kink, Winter in Heiron Spoilers, post-Winter in Heiron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 11:57:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14715584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: Ephrim turns to Samot for whatever relief he can get.





	Bitter Heat

**Author's Note:**

> This one's for Alix: 
> 
> "you should do Ephrim worshipping Samot  
> But like in a sexy way"
> 
> I am yours to command.

Ephrim dislikes kneeling and he dislikes bowing his head. He has always looked Samot directly in the eye when offering him words—of hate, often—of guilt, rarely—once in a while of fear, open and undisguised, although his fear more regularly shows itself in anger.

They have fought bitterly, and fucked with strange mutual hunger, and Ephrim has held a sword to Samot’s throat with trembling fingers and told him that he’ll destroy any god—anyone—anything that tries to use him, ever again.

Samot has encased his ruined hand in star-stuff, and kissed it above the hole burned through the palm.

No, the stars will not save the world. But some small things this failed project of his may yet achieve.

This is the delicate balance between them. Ephrim is fire even as he holds his power leashed. Samot is ice, the embers of his soul plunged into cold darkness again. By Ephrim’s deed. Ephrim’s hand.

There is nothing of Samot’s family left here in this world but Samol—Samol who has rejected him—

And still he wants to save it—

Will you be my general, he asked Ephrim, with Ephrim’s blade still at his throat, and Ephrim had begun to laugh, with a fragile hysteria that led Samot to lift his now-trembling hand further away.

Yes, he said. But not your supplicant. I’m my own.

Samot had wondered. But he had worshipers enough. So be it—

Ephrim is kneeling now. Kneeling—not in his bedchamber nor in Samot’s, but in the first room of the suite Samot has claimed, close to the door.

Samot closes that door with a soft thud behind him.

“Ephrim,” he says, with careful intonation.

“Don’t even,” Ephrim says. “Just don’t.”

He isn’t even looking at Samot.

“I think I must.”

Ephrim’s gaze is a hot flare, there and gone again.

Samot walks past him, leaving him kneeling—returns with a chair, a quite pleasingly ordinary thing from the dining table, upon which he settles himself, Ephrim once more before him.

“You gave me one rule,” he said. “And now I’m to break it on your whim? I’m _not_ my—my son.”

“Let me have this,” Ephrim says, which shows at least that he has grasped the purpose of prayer better than most—understands it as the selfish human thing it is.

His voice is savage.

Samot extends a booted foot—presses the toe into the junction between Ephrim’s jaw and neck and pushes, until Ephrim’s head is forced up and back—until he’s forced to look Samot in the eye. Properly.

“I have too much in me,” Ephrim snaps. His voice vibrates through the thin sole of Samot’s boot. “Of him—his fucking fire—it just keeps building. Take it away from me.”

They study each other closely. 

Ephrim is unflinching now. 

That’s good.

“Very well,” Samot says. 

No need for worship to do _that_. But a need in Ephrim, all the same. Perhaps what he needs is this excuse. 

Samot can understand that.

“How are you worshiped?” Ephrim asks. Of course. He's avoided Samot's priests, too.

“I’m not so fond of scripture as my son,” Samot says. “Or my late husband either. I have a church these days. But once I had a great living celebration that moved forever across a beautiful land—“ He smiles. “Youth.”

Ephrim waits.

He is, Samot notes with interest, definitely hard.

“If you’d like the answer to be _while naked, mostly,_ then I can work with that. Otherwise, heartfelt words tend to be a fair start.”

 _I think I hate you,_ Ephrim’s gaze communicates. Or perhaps, _I think I love you and I’m angry about it._

Neither sentiment would be particularly novel.

Ephrim reaches for the first fastening of his robes.

Samot lowers his foot fall to permit it—is pleased when Ephrim doesn’t seize the opportunity to look away.

A faint red imprint lingers, darkening to a bruise right at the edge of his jaw.

“Come closer,” Samot says, when Ephrim is stripped down to his skin. Gestures to the space immediately before him, uncrossing his legs to provide space. 

To provide a clear indication.

Ephrim’s breath shudders.

He’s very young. Not even young in the way Hadrian is young beside a god. Rather he’s young the way Samot was before his peers in those first days of uncertain new existence. Bold and passionate and without full understanding of the weight of responsibility. Although Samot learned quickly. 

Ephrim is still learning.

“Please,” he says.

Samot reaches out a hand and places it upon his head.

“Yes,” he says. “What do you desire?”

“Relief, it it pleases you,” Ephrim says. The sudden formality of his tone comes naturally; he was raised, after all, in a church.

Even his hair is warm to the touch.

His skin is burning.

Ah, but Samot is ice. There’s that, at least.

Ephrim cries out at the wash of cold he’s granted, first the sharp gasp of a plunge into icy water and then the ecstatic pleasure of a cool drink after a long thirst.

It will not be enough. But it’s enough to make Ephrim shake, clinging with one hand to Samot’s knee for support or comfort.

“My lord,” he says, and he says it without sarcasm or anger, only with need. Or desire. ”I beg you—“

He cries out again at a new wave, pure pleasure now, close to pain though it must be. His shoulders hunch, his body curling in on itself in reflexive obeisance. 

“You beg me?” Samot asks.

“I beg you,” Ephrim repeats. “I serve you well—I honour you—grant me this—“

He’s shaking, full-body. Samot holds him there, cradles him in cool magic—close to extinction—close to release—close to the dark. But not the heat.

Ephrim’s body grows taut and then slack—tightens again—reaches hopelessly for the final convulsive tightness of orgasm and is gently, firmly denied. The arousal Samot feels is born from Ephrim's, from the need in him—Ephrim imagines taking Samot's cock in his mouth—he imagines pressing his nose into the hair around it, the head of it deep in his throat, his prayer cut off and turned into another kind of breathless worship—

He’s crying. Cold silvery tears, heavy with Samot’s own magic. The words that he speaks are barely language—they are fragments—they are impulses beyond name.

Samot draws him close, allows Ephrim to rest his head against the inside of his thigh, so that Ephrim can feel that Samot is aroused, that Samot is pleased. Ephrim turns his face so that his gasping breaths are hot against Samot's cock. Oh, he could give Ephrim what he wants. But not like this.

“That’s enough,” Samot says softly, and cuts the ties of magic with a quick slice of pure will. 

Ephrim collapses—doesn’t only slump—falls utterly slack, spent beyond imagining. It becomes a long wave of pleasure in Samot, rising and falling, never quite reaching that final peak. But that's fine.

“I know,” Samot says. He slides from his chair to sit on the floor, lifts Ephrim’s head onto his lap. “It was like this for me sometimes, once. Before his power. I know.”

Ephrim says nothing. Probably there’s nothing he can say, and nothing in him with strength enough to speak. But his hair is cool to the touch, his skin only warm in its ordinary way.

“You aren’t my subject,” Samot says. “I granted you that, even though I could just as well have struck you down for what you did. I’ve broken enough promises in my life, I admit, but—“ he laughs, soft, barely voiced. 

He feels Ephrim swallow heavily against his thigh.

“The things we do to one another,” Samot says, laughter fading. “Oh, Ephrim.”

The evening light fades to true night as they sit together. 

No stars remain. But the moons endure.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on twitter at [toftochfyren](https://twitter.com/toftochfyren)!


End file.
